3 out of 5

I’m not quite sure about the origin of the ‘Year of Marvels’ #1s – each issue featuring two short stories seemingly themed to a holiday from a particular month – but we’ll assume this sprung from an online source.  That’s not a criticism one way or another, just, I suppose, a note on the relative randomness of the tales here, somewhat akin to the holiday specials in that current characters or events might be referenced, but otherwise it’s a story that can exist on its own.

For half of the book, we get the manga-esque ‘Return of the Phoenix’ by Yves Bigerel.  While poking fun at some comic stereotypes via our narrative observer, designer Gene Grey (yuk yuk), Bigerel also commits some similar sins, with all of his female characters rather overly busty, to the point where I wondered if I was missing out on some other joke… but I think that’s just how Bigerel draws ’em.  Besides that, the tale is pretty funny – it exists just to make fun of some characters – and Yves has a good sense of comic pacing and a nice balance between Bagley-looseness and his manga look.

For the other half, Dennis Culver writes a conceptually fun team-up between female Wolvie and She-Hulk, fighting some sister wendigos, that ends up stalling because the dialogue is rather overly camp.  It’s a shame because the setup is actually pretty roundabout inventive, and Leonardo Romero’s clean art (which… looks like Culver’s own a bit…) would be a good match for Dennis’ silver-ageish writing style, but again, Wolvie’s – our POV – words and thoughts lean a bit too much into cheesy territory; too much so to consider it purposeful.

I suspect ‘Year of Marvels’ readers are those who already enjoyed this stuff in some other format, or you’re following a character or (like me) a creator.  If you don’t fall into this group, with the standalone concept, although the book is generally well-written and drawn by its sets of writers/artists, there’s not really enough meat to encourage one to read the series.